The reduced handful of traditional parties clustered around the MUD finally did something sensible. They walked out of the Maduro regime’s dog-and-pony show.

The MUD has suspended its month-old “dialogue” with the Maduro regime because the regime is acting in bad faith, MUD’s executive secretary Ramon Guillermo Aveledo announced.

Aveledo listed all the regime’s acts of bad faith and ill will during the month-long circus. But in fact, the “dialogue” was a farce before it started.

Students and organized labor were excluded, and the MUD figures at the dialogue really only represented the shrunken world of the auld AD/Copei combines and their respective spinoffs. No new blood there.

The international brokers of the dead “dialogue” – Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil – were never impartial. Colombia’s Santos, Ecuador’s Correa and Brazil’s Rousseff all carry water for Havana, and always are biased in favor of the Maduro regime.

The MUD never should have accepted the choice of arbitrators to begin with. If there weren’t other options because the Maduro regime forbade it, then the MUD should have embraced the student-led movement in Venezuela’s streets instead of engaging in irrelevant Bolivarian Kabuki.

Screw dialogue. It’s never been an option, but it certainly has been a useful month-long stage prop for a dictatorial criminal regime to pretend it only wants peace.

The majority of the country opposed to the Maduro/Cabello/Rodriguez Torres criminal tyranny obviously hopes for peaceful democratic change. But let’s face it: that doesn’t appear to be a viable option considering the regime’s proven determination to stay in power at any cost.

The student street protests are continuing, and the regime’s violent repression is escalating. I think the students aren’t going to stop. They’re legitimately enraged, their cause is righteous and just, and everything the regime has attempted only strengthens their determination to continue protesting.

Will things reach a point where some now protesting peacefully in the streets decide the time has come to take up arms against their oppressors? Recalling how young men and women in countries like Argentina and Brazil engaged in violent anti-regime struggle during the 1960s-70s… could that happen in Venezuela today where yesterday’s socialist revolutionaries have turned out to be thieving fascist thugs?

What might the MUD’s remnants do now that the “dialogue” is over? Where are its allies? Certainly not in the streets, barrios and labor unions.

The current situation of the AD/Copei forces and their younger spinoffs in the MUD might be different today if they had collectively embraced the student-led street protests against the regime when they first started last February.

Young leaders like Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado embraced the protests immediately. It’s always been clear to both leaders that there’s no dialoguing about anything with this regime. Ditto for Antonio Ledezma.

But the auld AD/Copei forces in the MUD and their offspring like Un Nuevo Tiempo and Primero Justicia frowned on the student protests because the kids were acting independently.

If the student movement does decide now to make some kind of alliance with the MUD, it’s certain that student leaders won’t permit the AD-Copei-UNT-PJ forces to co-opt their movement. That means any pact between the students and MUD could be shortlived.

The Venezuelan Catholic Church obviously is an important player. The Church always will make every possible effort to encourage peace and dialogue, of course.

But the reality is the Venezuelan Catholic hierarchy has very little influence over developments. The Church certainly does not have any influence with the hardcore center of the Maduro/Cabello/Rodriguez Torres regime. But would the faithful respond assertively if the Bishops started giving Sunday sermons against the regime’s tyranny and crimes against the people? I have my doubts…

A year into his elected presidency, Maduro is unpopular, demonstrably ignorant and completely lacking in charisma. Maduro also appears to be a very weak president with little or no authority over key regime figures like National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello and Interior & Justice Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres.

Cabello and Rodriguez Torres are independently running their own political and repression campaigns against their foes, whose numbers are not necessarily limited exclusively to the ‘oppo,’ stoking along the way more tensions that further undermine Maduro politically.

Cabello clearly has his eyes set on taking the presidency; so does Rodriguez Torres.

The Maduro/Cabello/Rodriguez Torres regime will not yield on any issue. They hold all the power, and control the institutions.

The regime controls the National Assembly, Supreme Court and Judiciary, Attorney General, CNE electoral authority, national police and intelligence services, the National Guard and the armed forces.

The Maduro/Cabello/Rodriguez Torres regime also has thousands armed civilian gunmen deployed in Caracas and throughout the country in the “colectivos” who are paid by the regime to intimidate, maim and kill regime critics particularly in the barrios.

The regime isn’t concerned about possible US sanctions against Venezuela either. Jacobson already said sanctions are unnecessary. Some critics think State is defending US oil interests. Perhaps. But the Obama administration also has a bad case of sanctions fatigue and it’s having a difficult time dealing with multiple foreign policy crises in Ukraine, the Middle East and China’s expanding Asian-Pacific reach.

Venezuela is barely on State’s radar, a small potatoes crisis when compared with Ukraine or the Middle East, and Venezuelan oil isn’t as critical to the US as it was only 10-15 years ago.

Venezuela’s immediate outlook looks bleaker by the day. Pdvsa is broke, the country has run out of hard currency, shortages of everything are the worst in Venezuela’s history, and every productive sector of the economy is in a deep hole operationally and financially.

A year on and the Maduro/Cabello/Rodriguez Torres regime haven’t enacted any sensible reforms to revive the stagnant economy. They’re so incompetent, they have no idea what they’re doing, a fellow blogger remarked recently. I agreed, but in retrospect, what if we’re mistaken?

What if everything happening in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez’s death is intended to completely destroy the economy in order to complete the subjugation of the populace? Ultimately, at some point the national destruction being wrought at an accelerated pace by the Maduro/Cabello/Rodriguez Torres regime appears to narrow one’s options to fighting, fleeing or submitting.